Long beeps followed long silences.

‘Emeroteca,’ said a young woman’s voice.

‘Have you got La Gazzetta from the last few days?’

‘Sure.’

‘Open shelf?’

‘Sure.’

‘You’re open all morning?’

‘Until five tonight.’

I dropped the phone in the cradle, stood up and pulled on my jacket. I walked the back way, along Viale Mentana and Viale Piacenza, coming at the library through the Parco Ducale. It was a small building, but quick and efficient. A girl, the one I had spoken to by the sound of her Roman accent, fetched the two Gazzettas published over the weekend and passed them to me in a pile the size of a child’s mattress.

I took them to a desk and laid them out in front of me. I took the Saturday edition and opened up the paper.

It was winter and the sports section was full of calciomercato: the transfer gossip surrounding the big teams. All the important clubs and names were in bold so that you could read all the likely deals in a few seconds.

I turned over another page and saw a wall of faces staring back at me. These were photographs of the people who had died in the last few days. La Gazzetta must have been making a mint out of mourners. I knew how much each inch cost from when I had lost a friend a while back. The necrologi were money for old rope.

Most of the photographs looked as if they were taken when the deceased were in middle age and they made the paper like a throwback to the 1970s. There was something about the faces, the thickness of the glasses and the length of the hair, which looked out of date. Alongside each photograph or name were expressions of mourning from relatives and friends.

There was no mention of Salati. She had probably died too late on the Friday for anyone to publish a mourning notice on the Saturday. I took the Sunday paper and flicked through it to the pages of the dead. Almost a third of a page was dedicated to her. There were thirty or forty rectangular inches of sympathy from relatives and friends, each announcing their deep regret. Everywhere the name Silvia was written in bold like one of those footballers about to be transferred.

There was a photograph of her, a black and white shot. She looked purposeful: a thin necklace around a tight jumper. A good-looking woman with a determined mouth.

I read through the names of those who had publicised their sense of loss. They were just meaningless names to me but I would get copies. My work was all about methodology. I would cut out every mourning notice and arrange them in some kind of alphabetical order. Many of the mourners wrote only first names, so it wouldn’t be an authoritative index of her kith and kin, but it was the closest I could come up with for now.

I walked to a side room where they kept the day’s papers and found the Gazzetta. I went to the necrologi again. There were more mourning notices expressing regret at Silvia’s death, fewer this time, but there were still a dozen or so.

I scanned through them and immediately saw the name Riccardo. I read the sentence above it. ‘I am devastated by our loss. I will always carry you in my heart. Your son, Riccardo.’

I looked at the words again. ‘Your son, Riccardo’, it said.

My immediate reaction was the same as Umberto’s. Nobody comes back from the dead, I thought. That was make-believe. This read more like someone who wanted to cloud an inheritance.

But it clouded my case as well. And if this was a phantom Riccardo, I would then be chasing two ghosts instead of one.

I asked the girl to photocopy the Sunday and Monday necrologi. She looked at me and sighed quietly. ‘One euro and twenty please.’

I passed her some coins that she dropped in a wooden drawer. She put the papers under the machine and a lime-green light moved across the paper.

‘The papers from the 1990s, are they back there as well?’

‘ La Gazzetta?’ she said over her shoulder.

‘ La Gazzetta, summer of 1995.’

‘It’s on film. Which months do you want?’

‘June, July, August.’

She gave me the photocopies and then opened the front desk and went back into the stacks. She came back with three large rolls of film and walked me over to the old-fashioned machines for viewing. She put one roll into position and fixed the other end into a slot and ran it forwards. She flicked a switch and the film was projected on to a large screen.

‘Backwards, forwards,’ she said, showing me the buttons for scanning through the month’s editions.

I thanked her and she walked back to her desk. I was both expectant and subdued. There might be something here that could give me some background, but it would probably just be a waste of time. Most of my work involved wasting time.

I started on 24 June. I went through the paper scanning the headlines. The first few pages were normally national and international news. I turned to the inside pages that ran small stories about what was going on in the city.

On 29 June I saw a small paragraph in a side-bar of information about shop opening hours and parking discounts. There was no photo and no byline. It was an appeal for information: SISSA MAN MISSING, ran the headline:

Riccardo Salati went missing on Saturday 24 June. He was last seen waiting for the Rimini train on platform two of the railway station. Anyone with information is asked to contact Colonello Franchini at the Questura.

I wrote down the name Franchini and quickly moved to the subsequent papers.

I went through the next two months but there was nothing. I would have to talk to someone on the paper, one of the reporters, see if they remembered anything.

I gave the rolls of film back to the girl and walked out. Just as I was reaching the road my phone started tickling my leg.

‘Castagnetti, it’s Dall’Aglio.’

‘That was quick. Any news?’

‘Not really. There wasn’t an investigation as such, because there was never a crime, not that we knew of.’

‘So who was Franchini?’

‘How did you get his name?’

‘Saw one of his adverts in La Gazzetta.’

‘Right. He registered the boy’s disappearance. It was more a bureaucratic mechanism than the beginning of an investigation. That’s the only thing I found, the report. Once he was reported missing some photographs will have been distributed and advertisements will have been placed in the local press. But there’s nothing here in our records.’

‘Who was Franchini?’

‘He was one of the commanders when I arrived. Retired now.’

‘No relative of Piero Franchini?’ It was always worth trying to make connections. Piero Franchini was a town councillor. Had been for as long as I could remember.

‘Not that I know of.’

‘And what was the word on him?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You know, what did they say about Franchini?’

‘Franchini? A bit of a drinker.’

‘Isn’t everyone?’

‘He was straight if that’s what you mean. Straight as a Roman road. Never a hint of association with anything other than the force and his family.’ Dall’Aglio was always quick to defend his uniform.

‘Where can I get hold of him?’

‘He moved out to the hills.’

‘Anything a bit more precise…?’

‘Listen, Castagnetti, I shouldn’t even have given you this much. You can find him easily enough. I’m not giving out addresses.’

‘The village at least.’

‘Medesano.’

‘OK. Thanks. I owe you one.’

‘You don’t owe me anything. I don’t trade favours because they become like money. People want more and more of them. I just render public what I decide is in the public interest.’

‘You’re a good man,’ I buttered.

‘I only ask that you keep me informed of your investigation.’

‘Of course.’

I drove over to Medesano. It was a town I knew a bit. A girl I used to know had friends out there.